Red rain 2.0 (21 page)

Helen's laughing harder now. "Cro-Magnon, babe. You
really
don't know how women's minds work, do you?"

"There isn't a girl in town who wouldn't be scared to death to get involved with me if they knew how well I
do
know them."

"The ego on you really stuns me," Helen manages, still laughing. "Tell you a truth right now. You've got sweaty palms about this. You're praying I don't go all girly, since you already feel like a cradle robber. You're scared I'm going to find out lots of your secrets. MJ's gonna give them up."

"No way. Negative." I smile. But, dammit, my palms are sweaty, a little at least. Within an hour even I can see Helen's in the X-ring. MJ treats her exactly like a contemporary, not a schoolgirl, and Helen makes a bond. They're an instant team, and they're amusing themselves with their boys. They're out in the backyard lying in lounge chairs, taking the last of the September sun, and laughing excessively, in my opinion.

"How is it women get away with this shit?" Ice Box says. We're in the kitchen, him laboring over the food and me a neutral observer. "Like bugs under a microscope, you and me."

"Affirmative. Got to face one fact, IB. They're smarter than us."

"But how is it they get so tuned in to each other so quick?

155

If they click at all, they click as soon as they meet. Never works that way with men."

"No, never does."

"Helen's so sharp it's scary," IB says, removing a foil-lined baking dish from the oven. The kitchen's immediately awash in aromas of oregano, Parmesan, ricotta, provelone and other good things. I hear more laughter outside. "I underestimated you on this one, Five-O. I admit it. Imagine what she's going to be like in a few years, once she's been out in the world and picked up some experience."

"Isn't it about chow time, IB?" I want off this subject. It's reminded me about those thoughts of Helen I squelched after our Ecstasy night.

"Yeah. Go get 'em, will you?"

Over the baked ziti and salad and a decent red Merlot from the Veneto, IB and I are face-to-face with female complicity.

"I tried making this dish once. Just once," MJ says to Helen.

"I can guess what happened," Helen says. "IB claimed it was no way near as good as what his mom makes. Though it was probably a lot better."

"Now that's not exactly what..." IB tries.

"Exactly," MJ says to Helen, tossing IB a wicked grin. "God bless the sacred Italian momma. Once he complained that his mom even washed his underpants better than I could. How, I asked? Don't know exactly, he said, they just feel better, the way Mom does it."

Helen nearly spews a mouthful of wine across the table, convulsed with laughter.

IB's looking stricken, staring alternately at his food and at Helen. I can feel he's hoping I'll wade into this.

"What about women and their doting dads, spoiling then-darling girls rotten? We must be a real comedown for you," I say.

"That the best you can do?" IB mutters.

"Not at all," MJ says. "No sensible woman wants some

156

kind of gentle patriarch for her man, once she's past puberty. On the other hand, we do appreciate a little maturity."

"Like what, exactly, are you talking about here?" IB says.

"Well, it would be nice if you didn't strut around the house with your big gun in your shoulder holster, and make some kind of drama out of taking the rig off when we get undressed for bed," MJ says. "Luther like that, Helen?"

"Worse. Sometimes he looks like Keanu Reeves in that scene in
Matrix,
armed head to ankle. Real bad actor." She laughs.

"Just tools," I say.

"Do carpenters and plumbers wear their hammers or plunger things in fancy leather harnesses at home? Do they carefully arrange them on the night table?" MJ grins. "You guys are frustrated movie stars."

"Not me," IB says weakly.

But over espresso and panettone, they display mercy. No more teasing, no more analysis. The talk turns toward the dailiness of life—what Helen's studying, what MJ studied, how long she'll stay at home with the kids before going back to work, that sort of thing.

"Got the names yet?" I venture.

"I do. But IB's bridling. He wants—get this, Helen— one of them named after his momma."

"Now wait a sec. Have I made an issue of this?" IB says, so obviously defensive we all start to laugh, for it's clear he's at least been wheedling about it.

"And that would be ... ?" Helen asks.

"Maria Annunciata." MJ grins. "Might as well put 'Sister' in front of that on the damn birth certificate."

"So we call her Maria. That's a pretty name. Find any fault with that name?" IB says.

"What'll they actually be, MJ?" Helen asks.

"Allison and Sarah."

"Sweet," Helen says.

Ice Box catches me aside when we're about to leave and hisses in my ear. "Goddammit, Luther! You know what's

157

happened? Now they're gonna be friends, calling each other up all the time and bad-mouthing us, giving each other ammo to use against us."

"Hey man, remember who told who to bring who. I'm clean here. Not my fault."

"But you let 'em get away with it, you pussy."

"Didn't see you wading in and containing things, big man. All I saw was the Ice Box doing a large cringe routine."

But back home I half expect Helen, who slipped an Ecstasy tab down in the car when she thought I wasn't seeing her moves, to go a bit dreamy, maybe drop some hints about a future.

"MJ's terrific, and they're a solid couple," she says. "But Jesus, no way in the world I'd want to be in her place, with anyone. Husband, kids? The absolute pits."

Light recoil.

17

Heavy recoil.

"Five-O. Where've you been, man?" IB almost snarls when I hit the squad room a little late next morning. "Out cruising the high schools for young snatch?"

"Oh, hostile, IB. Kind of aggressive. You're not still brooding on last night, are you? 'Cause that'd be really immature."

"Last night, yeah. But not why you think." IB takes a deep breath. "Jimmy Halliday bit it last night," he says.

"What?"

"Stupid little fuck took his old man's SLK to the limit on Route 83, lost it, rolled at least six times." Ice Box slams his fist into the cubicle wall. "Dead meat, man. Roadkill."

"You're shitting me!"

"State troopers hit the scene first. Say the car was flat as a pancake. When they pried it apart, Jimmy was mostly jelly. They had to
shovel
the goop into a body bag."

"Where'd you get all this?"

"Local BCPD went to the scene when they heard the troopers radio for the meat wagon. Guy I know who responded called me this morning. They managed to find his license in the goo. Saw the address, saw it was our territory, phoned to ask if somebody down here wanted to break it to his parents, or let the troopers do it."

"Christ! Dugal know?"

159

"Of course."

"So what's he doing?"

"Nothing."

"Fuckin' nothing!" I explode.

"Hey, what's he supposed to do? It was a car crash. They checked blood. Alcohol about twice the drunk percentage, man."

I crash into Dugal's office. "We gotta get that car, LT."

"You might knock, Luther," Dugal says, not looking up from an open file on his desk. "Now, are you possibly speaking of the Mercedes James Halliday managed to kill himself in?"

"Shit, what else, LT? We gotta get that car, check it out!"

"What for? Anyway, the state police have it. Hell, I understand it's not really recognizable as a motor vehicle anymore."

"Cross your mind, LT, that somebody took Jimmy out? Somebody figured he gave us Buzz Cut and did a sure-to-crash number on that car?"

"As a point of fact, it did cross my mind, Ewing. Crossed and re-crossed, not that I'm obliged to explain myself to you. But the kid was so drunk he'd probably have come very dose to dying from alcohol poisoning, if he hadn't crashed die car. You really think we're going to find anything at all at the wreckage that might confirm a murder attempt? Some sort of cut hydraulic line, some tampering with the brakes or the accelerator? The troopers say there's no way in hell to tell a goddamn thing of the sort, the car's so totaled. I asked, for your information, Ewing."

I don't say a thing.

"The troopers are about ready to close the file on this one already. Kid with extraordinarily high levels of alcohol in his blood loses control of a car traveling an estimated 125 miles per hour. End of story. Now what is it, exactly, you want from me on this? We've lost a key fucking witness. End of the second story."

160

"I just don't buy it, LT. Something's kinked here, I can smell it."

"Oh, you can? Well, please give me a full report when it dawns on you just what you smell. But do not—repeat, do not—waste your time and mine following your nose. The case against Buzz Cut is still solid gold. He sold smack to you, remember? In full view of four other cops."

"We promised the kid and his father this was a no-risk deal," I say.

"And so it was. Nobody killed Halliday. Halliday offed himself. Nothing we could have done to protect anyone from that. Now, if you've got it all off your chest, get the fuck out of my office, will you? I got work to do."

I leave.

"Well?" IB says.

"Well shit. But I just don't read Jimmy as the type to do something like that. Do you?"

"On one level, no," Ice Box says. "He wasn't like that. But I've seen so many kids change practically overnight into somebody you wouldn't recognize that I'm not real surprised. Something snaps, they go wild. Jimmy just had worse luck than most."

"Too pat, too easy. If they didn't fuck with the car, they fucked with his head. It was a hit, IB. I feel it, man. Buzz Cut's people took him out."

"Maybe, maybe not. I know this, though. No way in hell you'll ever prove it, not if you spend your entire life on that single case."

I leave the station, go across the street to the shitty deli that makes the shitty coffee that always turns my stomach acid and sour, and buy two take-out cups. I go back to my cubicle, gulp them down, scorching the taste buds on my tongue. If I'm gonna feel bad, I may as well feel worse, I figure. But there's a window on my brain screen with one word typed on it: Vassily.

After a while Ice Box glides over. "You okay now, Luther? You got your grip?" he asks.

161

"Da, durak,"
I say.

"Say what?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm cruising, man."

"Listen, Luther. Timing's kind of shitty, I know, but I got something I gotta run by you, okay? That you're maybe not gonna like much."

"Everything's copacetic, IB. Hit me."

"Well, after Hannah the other day, I asked the police artist to make a second sketch from the first, with the changes she talked about." He puts the sketch of the girl dealer on my desk.

"So? What?" I say.

"Look close, Luther. Check the eyes, the lip. Like Hannah described. What do you see?"

Double fucking recoil.

The sketch is Helen.

"Oh get fucked, IB. You cocksucker."

"Easy, Luther. Remember I just saw Helen for the first time yesterday. No bells rang. Then I'm looking at this sketch today and—shit, this sucks—I see it, with Hannah's changes. And you see it, too. You just gave it away."

"Fuck off. So what? It's a lousy sketch. Any resemblance is just coincidence. You could pull in three dozen girls this age, line 'em up, and never make a match on one, even if the real one was among them."

"Yeah, sure. You're right, I know you're right. It's just kind of weird, is all," IB says, unusually softly. "Uhh, what kind of car does Helen drive, Luther?"

"A Bug, you dumb fuck," I say, start to rise into a combat stance, but get a grip before my butt's three inches off the chair and slump down.

I hit the button to start my Mac. "Get away from here, IB—now," I say, crumpling the sketch with my left hand and tossing it back over my shoulder at him. Silence, except for the ping and pong the Mac makes as it boots up. I know IB's gone. His fucking shadow's still looming over me, though.

162

It gets darker. Peter Raskin, known as Buzz Cut, drug dealer from Brooklyn of Russian parentage, fails to show up for his grand jury that afternoon. Eckhaus goes ballistic on the steps of the courthouse.

"Little stupid," Vassily had called Buzz Cut.

Right.

Little dead is more like it. Radik up in homicide gives me a call around five-thirty. A headless, handless body was found early this morning in a Dumpster behind an Acme supermarket in Pikesville. The medical examiner and forensics guys agree that judging from maggot activity on the corpse, it's only three or four days old. They also agree—seeing burns on the genitals and other marks—that whoever the fucking corpse was, he was tortured very, very systematically for a long time before he died. Since there's no sign of any mortal injury on the body, they conclude he was killed in the head.